Archive for the ‘crowdfunding’ tag

* Let’s start off this week’s Four-Links with this model of the caravan crash from the first Mad Max as done by Shoey on the Australian Automotive Model Builders forum, detailed down to the artwork on the side of the destroyed caravan. Thanks for the tip, Mark!

* The Bowery Boys, a blog dedicated to New York City history, took a look at the epidemic and culture of abandoned cars on the streets of the city’s five boroughs during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when as many as 79,000 cars a year were left stripped and smashed around the city. Thanks to Diskojoe for the story tip!

* Speaking of once unloved cars, The Petrol Stop this week took a look at the rise of what it calls the “Retro Car Scene” in the U.K., where younger car enthusiasts have begun seeking out Lada Nivas, Fiat 124s, Reliant Robins, and other cars once dismissed by the traditional oldtimer scene.

* Finally, If you haven’t yet been propositioned to contribute to somebody’s restoration via Kickstarter, GoFundMe, or some other crowdfunding site, you probably will soon. FlatSixes.com has and – at least for one particular Porsche 924 – they recommend staying far far away.

For a guy who’s famously taciturn, Kent Fuller is one of the most powerful thinkers in the world of drag racing and land speed competition. He built his first dragster in 1956, and soon revolutionized that category by pioneering the horizontal-loop three-point roll bar, which obsoleted the earlier “skidbar” configuration favored by the likes of Scotty Fenn. That started a journey that led Fuller to a collaboration with Tommy Ivo, the discovery of Don Prudhomme, and his chassis as the basis for the most dominant Top Fuel dragster in history, the Greer-Black-Prudhomme dragster.

Since then, Fuller went on to design the radical Magicar dragster of 1963, a frame-within-a-frame innovation that allowed the driveline to be suspended. Later, he went into business building Volkswagen-based replica hot rods. At 79, he’s still at it. Fuller’s last stand, assisted by 14-year-old grandson Greg, is to build a new Bonneville streamliner with an even newer method of financing it: Fuller is using social media to fund the car via Kickstarter, an online funding platform that has seen more than 3.9 million people pledge more than $591 million, funding more than 40,000 creative projects ranging from books and film to technology, since its launch in 2009. The practice is known as crowdfunding, and Kickerstarter says Fuller’s LSR project will be the world’s first crowdfunded competition vehicle. Spec-wise, the Fuller car is a radical monocoque streamliner, designed so the pilot, ex-Indy Lights driver Andy Davis, will have to lie flat, his only view of the course coming via the mirrors on a periscope. Using an unblown flathead on nitro, the team aims to topple the current SCTA XF/FS record at 280 MPH and change.